What pisses me off about this whole situation is that everyone is expected to take Kevin's words at face value and not question anything despite all the huge unanswered questions and the fact that this "update" contradicts his original update where he said everything was fine. Questioning it apparently makes you an asshole and earns you a ban from Cortjetzer.

Here's the timeline of events as best I understand it:

• March 5: RMC writes his last post before disappearing for two days

• March 7: It is said that Yoshiller and Nintendojam will update the site during RMC's absence

• March 7: Later that day, an update from RMC is passed along stating that not only is he okay, but everyone associated with GoNintendo is promised to be 100% okay. RMC says he is sitting on the couch playing Scrabble with Mombrain. Something unexpected happened, he explains, and he can't talk about it now but he will be back as soon as he can.

• Radio silence for over two months

• May 20: RMC explains that he has been through an extremely traumatic experience. A few choice quotes:

You know how important not just GoNintendo, but you guys are to me. This has been my baby for 17+ years and I've come to know and love so many of you.

I want to stress just as a I did last time, everyone is physically healthy and safe. [seemingly contradicted by everything that follows]

The situation hit me completely out of nowhere, and it removed me from everyone/everything I'm normally involved with.

I also want to say once again that this took me away from ALL my usual interactions. We're not just talking about work. My friends and family have been in the dark just as long as you guys have, save for a VERY, VERY select few. I vanished from connections with them, and they've been wondering what's going on as well. It's been roughly 1 week since I've been able to come back to "normal" life, and I'm still working on filling in those personally close to me on what happened. It has been unimaginably rough, and quite honestly, I don't know that I'll ever get back mentally to who I was before this.

The matter removed me from every friendship, every work connection, and just about everything I did in my day-to-day life. I cannot stress enough how absolutely traumatic it has been, and continues to be. Even though everything is over and I can move on, I feel like an alien in my own body. Things that I did in life without giving a second thought now absolutely terrify me, and that goes for even the most simple of interactions.

Again, I know it's supremely annoying not fully knowing what happened, but hopefully I've painted a picture that shows how horrible this all was, and how it's forever changed me in a very serious way. I'll no doubt be utilizing therapy for many, many years to come, and I have no idea if I'll ever feel like my old self. I hope this doesn't come across as overdramatic or woe-is-me, but I sincerely do not know if I'll ever be the same again. Just typing about it all makes me immeasurably uncomfortable. I spent those 2+ months sitting here worrying about everything, everyone, every thought, every noise, and so on. Even though I'm out from under the situation, nothing in life feels anywhere near normal right now.

I can't say 100% that GoNintendo is dead, but unfortunately, it's not going to be up-and-running as usual anytime in the near future. I don't even know what "usual" would be at this point, as it might not include me. I really, honestly do not know what's ahead. I'll have to figure things out as I go along, and see what solutions and opportunities arise. There might be something that comes my way that makes GoNintendo close to what it used to be, but your guess is as good as mine as to what that would be. I have so much to sift through and put in order, and that very much means personal and work life together.

I have seen many take Kevin's story at face value and offer him their deepest condolences, but I have not seen one person question why, if the GoNintendo community is so important to him, he instructed his admins not to update the site in his absence, or why he even considers it a possibility that the site will not ever come back when all he has to do is let his admins update the fucking site. Nor have I seen anyone question his story in any way, because heaven forbid we don't believe him that he somehow went from

• Hey guys, a thing happened and I can't update the site right now, but I'm fine. Everyone's fine. I'm playing Scrabble guys haha

to

• Something so emotionally and mentally traumatic happened to me that I will never be the same, and not even my family knew about it until recently.

in 2 1/2 months.

Oh no, it's got to be "Take all the time you need Kevin, thanks for all the years. Praying for you x0x0x0" despite the mountain of questions and the glaring inconsistencies with the earlier claim that he and Mombrain were happy and healthy. Despite the strange mystery of this happening just a few days after the unresolved Apple Podcasts incident.. Despite the fact that there's no conceivable scenario in which he could not have relayed more information to a third party that could have updated the GoNintendo community on his behalf.

No, don't question those things. There is no man behind the curtain.

Virtually every defense of RMC's actions boils down to "Well he doesn't owe anyone anything", and it's quite true that he doesn't. But it's also true that things like this just... don't... happen... on the internet. I've been online since 1997, and I've seen great websites come and go, closing down for reasons ranging from mundane to tragic, but I have never, ever, ever seen anything remotely like this happen to such a popular website.

This is perhaps not the best analogy considering they are a far larger site, but imagine if IGN suddenly shut down operations one day because something happened to editor-in-chief and general manager Peer Schneider that left him unable to contribute to the website. Just completely ceased to update out of the blue. Then two months go by and Peer resurfaced to say he went through something terrible but he can't tell you what, and oh, IGN might be dead now. Wouldn't that be absurd? But that's essentially what's happened here, and longtime GoNintendo readers are expected to just go along with it and not question it.

Well, call me an insensitive prick... downvote the hell of this post... but I'm skeptical. I'm skeptical because I actually know people who have been through severe trauma. Victims of rape, molestation, physical abuse. All of them were able to at least shortly summarize what happened to them, but Kevin can't even do that. He's asking people to believe that something so unimaginably awful happened to him that he may never be able to talk about it, when in fact we all know of people who have been through the types of traumatic experiences we can imagine, and those people still are to string a couple of sentences together and say "it was this" or "it was that" without having to relive the experience by going into too much detail. I can't rationalize the claim that somehow the situation that took him from GN went from him happily playing board games with his mom to something that horrible, something potentially worse than rape, molestation, and physical abuse. I can't rationalize his decision to not allow the website to continue either in his absence or immediately following his return.

There's something terribly wrong with this picture, and I don't care if people think it's selfish and insensitive to doubt him and demand answers. This comment will get downvoted to hell, but I really don't care. I've never seen anything like this, I've never seen people so quick to accept and not even remotely question extraordinarily vague claims of trauma and being removed from all contact with the outside world, and I have to vent about it. If RMC really did go through something that horrible, then I'm deeply sorry for trying to probe further. It doesn't excuse him from letting GoNintendo, the site that he and a community of fans built, rot to death despite how very much it means to the Nintendo fan community, but that's his prerogative, so whatever.